Everything's Better With Glitter

My friend/former student Urna returned to Mongolia yesterday! She graduated with a bachelor's in business from the University of Liverpool and is now back home. I'm so proud of all her accomplishments, and I'm delighted that she's back to contribute her intelligence and energy to Mongolia. Above is a photo of me (on left), our friend Bayara (middle) and Urna (right) at the Ikh Mongol, a popular restaurant/brewery that is currently celebrating Oktoberfest! We also celebrated Urna's return with flowers and chocolate cake on Tuesday night.

A funny anecdote about buying the flowers shown above. On several occasions I have noticed a shop near our house that sells fresh flowers. Fresh flowers are a relative rarity here. But I decided to buy a small bouquet of roses (okay, three, they're kind of expensive) for Urna. The shop sells each element of the bouquet separately, so I picked out three orange roses, some babies' breath, a piece of paper in which to wrap them, and a ribbon. The shopkeeper then asked me if I wanted something else, but I couldn't understand what she was saying (my Mongolian vocabulary really has never been used for flower-arranging purposes before!) so she said, "Do you want me to make it more beautiful?" I said, "Okay, sure," thinking that maybe she would add another ribbon or something. All of a sudden she pulled out a little bottle of silver glitter and sprinkled it all over the roses! Now, those of you who know my penchant for all things sparkly will understand that this was an excellent surprise, but it's no wonder I didn't understand the question-- she was asking me if I wanted her to glitter the bouquet!